George Archibald took this photo of me at the end of our tour to see whooping cranes on the Texas Gulf Coast. I’m smiling because I saw these awesome endangered cranes. — Photo by George Archibald
To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter… to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life. John Burroughs
The Man Who Danced with One
A page from my journal with a cutout of George Archibald in his whooping crane outfit.
I just finished reading To See Every Bird on Earth by Dan Koeppel. In it he mentioned George Archibald, a conservationist and co-creator of the International Crane Foundation. A day later, I read another mention about George, this time from one of my own journals. I had met George during a birding festival in Port Aransas in 2009, at which time he talked about the endangered whooping cranes that winter on the Texas Gulf Coast near Port Aransas.
In the 1940s, there were fewer than 25 whooping cranes left in the wild, and only a couple of these giant birds in captivity. Today, because of the efforts of Archibald and others like him, over 300 whoopers are now flying free, migrating between Canada and the lower U.S each year.
Whooping crame on Matagorda Island. — Photo by Pat Bean
During a workshop talk, George put on his crane costume and demonstrated how he danced with an orphan whooping crane chick as a way to teach it to dance the way whooping cranes do to attract and bond with a mate. Whooping cranes have to be taught this, as well as their migration paths, by their parents. Mom and Dad make their first winter migration flight with them.
I took pictures of George in his crane suit, and put some of them in my journal. Then the next day, I took the whooping crane tour aboard the Wharf Cat out to Matagorda Island to see the real whooping cranes. George was aboard and we had a nice long chat about the whoopers, and the work he and others are doing to save the cranes. It was a fascinating couple of days, and I’m glad both the book I was reading and my journals let me relive it.
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Bean Pat: Interesting Literature http://tinyurl.com/y8casam5 Edward Allan Poe’s The Raven. I first read this when I was nine or 10 years old. Although it was another 15 years before I knew I wanted to be a writer, this poem certainly helped me fall in love with the sound of words, even though I didn’t know what they all meant at the time.
Hi Pat, I frequently see the whooping crane’s next-of-kin, the sandhill crane, in my back yard. The similarity between the two species is striking.
I love sandhills, too. I’ve seen them do their mating dance in Utah. Haven’t seen the whoopers dance yet. I think they do that in Canada.
Thanks, Pat, for this interesting post, Seeing whooping cranes is till on our agenda, as is the Aransas Wildlife Refuge.
Have a good time,
Pit
P.S.: I had a nice typo here. It was “whopping” cranes. 😉 Well, they sure are whopping creatures, aren’t they?
I like that. Whopping cranes. Take the boat. You will get a much closer look at the cranes that way than on the refuge. They can usually be seen in threes, the mama, the papa and the chick, which is pretty much as big as the parents. They defend their territory. I got to see a dispute over one piece of property.
Thanks, Pat, for the advice. Will keep that in mind.
I read that book by Dan Koeppel as well as most other first-person books by extreme birders. Kenn Kaufman’s Kingbird Highway remains my favorite, partly because we’re close in age and partly because he was able to do his big year on the cheap, unlike everyone else who seems to be rich when they attempt it.
I, too, loved Kaufman’s Kingbird Highway. I got to go birding with him in Utah during a Great Salt Lake Birding Festival some years back, and the first bird seen on the outing was a western kingbird. I wrote about it for the newspaper I was working at back then. I assume you’ve also read The Big Year, which I loved, too.
Yes, and there was a bio about Phoebe Snetsinger (not her autobiography which I heard was not easy reading) that was fascinating. Life List by Olivia Gentile. She spent millions, apparently, on her quest. How cool that you met Kenn Kaufman.
Phoebe was an amazing woman. She was given just months to live and birding saved her life. I don’t think her record for seeing the most birds has been broken yet. I read a book about Phoebe, but I can’t remember its name and I don’t think it was Gentile’s.
Phoebe wrote an autobiography, I had just heard that it was hard to read, don’t quite know what that meant but it made me not want to try. I think it’s called Birding on Borrowed Time or something similar.
That may be the one I read. It was a while back. I keep a list of the books I read these days. I think I read it slowly, intermingled with other reading.